Cogito Ergo, OK, but Sum?

Day 232

More crises - help! What to do? Sam has finally made it to Malta after panics about money and trains and planes and packing weight, and I won't see or hear from him for a week. I am alone again, and braver now than before, so more issues are rising to the surface like pond scum on a stagnant lake.

I remember a time when I knew clearly who I was, a magical period of my life when Joe and I lived together in Crouch End. From 1983 to 1986 I was happy. I felt safe. I cried tears of joy every night for the first three weeks when we were finally rehoused and able to leave Joe's violent and bullying father. I sat in the middle of my precious housing association flat, on a vile green and orange patterned carpet, with absolutely no furniture and felt the happiest I'd ever been.

My life began then. I dressed outrageously, playing with vintage and charity shop clothes like marvellous new toys. I wore four watches, one of them set permanently to tea-time. Sometimes I wore odd shoes. My door was always open, and friends turned up constantly bearing gifts of furniture salvaged from skips, and bottles of Freixenet, and chips with Hellman's.

I painted rainbows on my walls and stuck outrageous cuttings from the personals in Time Out on my kitchen cupboards. I hung a chair on the ceiling. My bathroom light was surrounded by tinsel and the loo set off by a big pink tulle bow. My house was rarely tidy - interesting piles, my friends said - but sometimes it was actually spotless, all the furniture having been rearranged (a family obsession) and cleaned beneath, it having taken me till four in the morning.

I looked after my lovely and individual little boy, I explored the tentative beginnings of my creativity, I worked as a foster-parent, my home being blessed by the inclusion of the other children, and I chose how I wanted to live. I became a vegetarian, which had always been a step half taken anyway. I started learning to cook. I started learning everything, actually, so little having been taught me by my parents except fear.

I could put up shelves, change a plug, fix the hoover, and walk happily for miles. I acquired a cat. I had the odd boyfriend. I had various friends live at my house for a time, and once my sister lived with me for ten wonderful months. Sometimes I was lonely, sometimes I was jealous, but it was always OK and I knew who I was.

So when did I start to give myself away? I had worked so hard, in such a short space of time, to throw off the desperately negating effects of my childhood and stand proud. I had carved an identity that fitted and honoured me and those around me, but was still a developing work, open to change and growth and progress. Why did I trade it in? Was there a moment, a decision made, to throw it away, to let go, piece by precious piece, all that had been so carefully gleaned?

I find myself now - twenty-five years later almost - back at square one. I could reel off a list for you of my talents and skills, principles and character traits, and it would be a long, impressive and comprehensive list, but it would not tell you how I feel when I wake in the morning - when I look at my watch and, seeing it is late, feel an immediate stab of guilt and what can only be described as 'wrongness'.

For so many years I have lived my life around other people, my husband, my children, and my friends, making all my decisions, I now discover, with regards to them. I find that I am even making choices in response to their absense - "must make good use of the time I'm alone" etc. - as much as I do their presence!

I'm sure there has been plenty of need to learn this consideration of others in order to bring up my children wisely, to keep my marriage together, or to cherish and nurture relationships, but where in the midst of all this loving and 'good' behaviour did I lose me? I am wife, sister, mother, aunt, friend. I am artist, creator, cook, garderner, animal lover, blogger, singer, the lady who laughs loudly in shops and buys mulled wine for strangers at the Xmas market. But who am I when I am not in 'relationship' to anyone?

Is this how it feels after a lifetime of habit, to suddenly be widowed or divorced, to sit silent in an empty nest, become finally retired or unexpectedly redundant? The most burning, important, impending question, each second of the day seems to be "what do I, and only I, really want to do?" and I find I just don't know the answer.

I can fill up my days with things that are for other people - make the house nice for when visitors call, get caught up with things I've had on hold due to my illness so that people think I'm worthwhile as a person, not just some lazy, housebound slob, or change the sheets for when Steve comes home and save wearing my 'good' underwear for then, too. This is madness! Whatever am I doing? I remember Crouch End, I remember it - this was not who I found myself to be then, in that golden dawn of self discovery.

So. I cannot programme my GPS with the co-ordinates 'Bev', but how I wish I could. To find my way back (or is it forward?) to the lady I have lost would take more than SatNav. The best I find I am able to do today is to refuse any action that is about others. I am getting little done, but better that than to do it for the wrong reasons.

I am living with the strange discomfort and the guilty feelings and letting myself hear the lie in these. I am making myself think again - and again - to clear out old conditioning and find clarity and peace in my choices. If anyone knows the way to me, send a map, a compass, a code, I don't care what as I long as it shows me a direction.

I'm not drowning, but I am waving, and any kind of life raft would be nice.